1.31.2005

On Dogs, Delphinidae and Qyntel Woods - A Recipe for Healing

I am here to comfort you. To tell you that there is no further need to worry. No more cause for concern. Your pain will be eased and your love will come full bloom.

We will cradle him. We will nurture him. We will raise him. Like so many other castaways who have arrived on these shores, the tropics will heal the deep scars of troubles never forgotten.

As an Ambassador of South Florida, I can tell you that Qyntel Woods is now home.

Whereas Portland once failed, Miami will succeed. We dutifully accept the task and go forth with a renewed sense of optimism. Qyntel Woods will become a man.

Miami is his new womb and our rice & beans infused placenta will be the perfect nourishment. We’ve had practice before. Qyntel is just the latest in a long sordid line of reclamation projects.And while our success rate overall has never been perfect, it has made for good entertainment.

While reclamation projects in Miami Pro Sports and Pop Culture are common place, the athletic variety are almost always limited to mostly four types. Over the past two decades, each type has had varying degrees of success. Please exclude the 70s era Larry Czonkas and Jim Kellys of the world.

The four are:

Miami Dolphins Running Backs.

Florida Marlins Relievers

Any Miami Hurricane Football player.

Miami Heat Swingmen.

That Qyntel falls in the last of the list is the first sign of encouragement.

Of course,

the Dolphins have made the RB position one of the constant soap opera positions in all of sports history - from the purported Dan Marino sidekicks of Sammy Smith, Bobby Humphrey, Mark Higgs, John Avery and Cecil Collins to the now omnipotent and omnipresent lone might of Ricky Williams - the pinnacle of humbling and psychiatric freakishness. It is a black hole of jukers, stiff armers and sweepers. A land mine for talent.

Meanwhile, the Marlins and Hurricanes situations I will not discuss, both out of a hope to keep this column from being incredibly long and otherwise because they aren't as interesting. Other than to mention that the former has won in spite of the historic tenuousness of their bullpen and the latter has won just because the entire program embodies reclamation.

(If anything proves my feelings about Qyntel Woods most concisely it is the Miami Hurricanes program. They disprove the dolphin theorum I propose below, but that is chiefly because they are on their own level of eliteness. Surpassed by only a few things - like slam dunks.)

Hot Hot Heat

Bringing us to Miami Heat Swingmen.Throughout the NBA, athletic men who can play the 2, 3 or 4 are almost always talented, enigmatic, dysfunctional and a source of endless enjoyment. But we’ve had almost more than our own fair share in SouthBeach.

The range of success is varied. Some tantalized us with their style and grace but never fully delivered. Willie Burton is one of those players that you can’t believe once dropped 53 points. We first thought that Billy Owens would emerge as a consistent triple double threat, only to realize his frailty couldn’t even be measured in low-cut panties. Others never even could tease - Rodney Buford for one showed early on with his inability to get off the ganja that he should have been a player automatically assigned to the Trail Blazers in a thug dispersal draft. A precurser to Qyntel, with less promise. How he's managed to stay in the league is anybody's guess.

Others were fleeting. Mason returned to the City of his birth to grace us in black and red for only one purely Satanic year. It was as it should have always been, but he left for the fairer shores of Milwaukee and took our hearts with him. Ricky Davis was a mystery, a start too bright to shine in a land full of other supernovas like Enrique Iglesias, Bronson Pinchot and Elian Gonzalez. Yet, we excuse ourselves because we never really missed out on Ricky, except for rumblings of brilliance, we never saw him full on until he had already left and was attempting a triple double by shooting at his own basket...

Some succeeded in casual terms. Notably Mashburn and Odom.In Miami, Mash finally found some sort of twisted respect – even though frustration grew larger here than ever before and solidified itself as the label for his entire career.

And as for Lamar, well he will always be our prince. A magical season, a magical team, as Riles turned a boy crying for help into a diamond of a man, great enough to be traded for the Almighty Shaq. And it gives us the ray of hope that we can do the same for Woods. If only it were that simple.

Yes, Qyntel is the latest of the order. Rescued from the Blazers as Odom was rescued from the Clips. A lone raft at sea given a hand by a passing cruiser. But help, we will see, may hide under water.

In Qyntel there exists greater pain than in almost all the others. Sanscrit indicates that for him to reach his promise many cancers must be eliminated – part of the journey will be easy, but the majority will be a rival to the Crusades.

To begin Qyntel must abandon the grass. Clear and simple. There is no room for free love in Riley World. But you are more than welcome to use your trading card as identification down here. Many get in SoBe with much less.

As a member of the Miami Hea(r)t, Qyntel's superficial pain will be kneaded out like spongy dough being worked by worn, experienced, nubile hands. Discipline, practice and buying into a system will make him more uniform. More compatible for a team.

Fate suggests that Qyntel's Renaissance will not be the same as every other Riley reclamation project. His career has already been so strangely chaotic. He is a vibe.

It is Qyntel's deeper pain – terribly hidden and impossible to grasp – that will require deeper, more targeted treatment and quite possibly the aid of a friend from under the sea.

The Blazers leave a curse that can only be lifted by alternate treatmeant. In this case, the answer lies in the Animal Kingdom and the brand of healing that only a swim can bring!

A Beast of an Approach

Q

yntel’s forays into the world of beasts is well documented. His former dog, Hollywood, was found bleeding in an alley, dejected and lonly after being cast out. It says here he lacked the heart of a champion fighter and wasn't ready to jump back into the ring. Factually, an ensuing police investigation found bloody paw prints, dog fighting paraphernalia and other evidence of a dog fighting ring in Qyntel’s apartment.

(Most notably a treadmill. Can you imagine a 6-8 basketball player forcing a pit bull to run on a treadmill? What does he use? A string with a carrot on it, a whip or electric feedback? So many questions, so little answers.)

The land creatures brought Qyntel pain. Hollywood embodied the pugnacious moxie he tried to expound on the court, but his pet friend's own failures translated in the Master's parallel behavior. Qyntel tried to dominate both himself and Hollywood into submission, never realizing that the world begins and ends in a delicate rawness.

We must find him fairer company. A soft sonar that will cut through the muddied waters of his mind and unearth the gold laying hidden.

To reclaim the dream that is Qyntel Woods, Miami will envelop him in her crystal waters in the company of the closest thing there is to a hairless man with a blow hole. Yes, the very same mascot of our dissapointing flagship franchise, the Atlantic Dolphin.

The Dolphin seems the only creature both sage and insane enough suited for the task of bringing to potential a promising 6-8 small forward with good range, defensive prowess and great athleticism.

Reasons for this carefully constructed logic abound. There is no way Qyntel would pit Dolphins against each other in battle. They are simply too lovable. Their jumps through the tides should make even his callous heart melt. He will parallel their own existence with his own. Jumping through hoops on the basketball court and in the pool.

I am so confident that a new Flipper of Promiso Proportions will be a healer for Mr. Woods that I present to you two different examples of the fringe existence of Dolphin behavior. I am confident that they will offer you the same fearless prediction of redemption for Qyntel that I now recognize. They are kindred beasts.

Example 1:

"Brazilian scientists have reported for the first time ever homosexual behavior among dolphins living in their natural habitat, a Brazilian daily said Monday.

A team of Brazilian marine experts was studying the behavior and reproduction habits of the stenella longirostris species [long-snouted spinner dolphin] at the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha off northeastern Brazil when they identified homosexual behavior among males and females dolphins, the O Globo said.

Scientists at the RotatorDolphinCenter have said sexual activities among dolphins outside their reproductive season have the objective of giving sexual pleasure for the species of mammals, a rare behavior among animals. “We have reported so far at least 21 dolphins in the course of homosexual behavior, including oral sex among males,” José Martins, coordinator of a local marine research center, told the daily.

Sex among males is easier to testify because their sexual organs are external, according to the head researcher of the center, which operates in partnership with federal environmentalist agency Ibama.

The researchers say sex is prevalent among dolphins because they live in big herds, which may reach as many as 1,200 dolphins.

"

Example 2:

"Especially during 2003 we’ve had an increasing volume of reports about other dolphins visiting Dusty’s area, but conflicting opinions about whether she has actively interacted with them or not. On 3rd October 2003 a most dramatic incident occurred in which three larger dolphins, believed to be male, chased Dusty into the shallows where she was apparently taking refuge and forcibly took her out to sea with them. This was witnessed by observers both in the water (Ute and Jane) and on the shore and was concisely described to use by one local commentator as ‘Dusty was gang-banged’. That may sound over-dramatised, but during the late 1980’s researchers in Shark Bay, Western Australia, did indeed record the forcible abduction of female bottlenose dolphins in oestrus. Richard Connor and Rachel Smolker observed that male bottlenoses, in that population at least, form durable ‘alliances’, typically of 3 animals (one dolphin on its own cannot effectively coerce another dolphin), apparently for the specific purpose of forcing copulation on unwilling females, either by all the males or by the two most dominant ones amongst them. Certainly this behaviour could be described as ‘gang rape’ if it took place within human society, though we should as usual be wary of anthropomorphising.

Male coalitions have not been found to be universally prevalent in other bottlenose populations world-wide, and the abduction of one dolphin by others, with or without forced copulation, has not previously been recorded in European waters.

Once again, observations of an ‘aberrant’ solitary dolphin have added interesting new information to our knowledge of bottlenose dolphin society in general."

Conclusion:

The Dolphin - often Homosexual and often guilty of gang rape - yet always renowned as a healer to those who suffer from blindness, deafness, autism and an inconsistent jumper...

It only makes perfect sense that an enigmatic basketball player will be healed by forgiving mammals who know that while one of their dogmatic brethren, Hollywood, the Sam Bowie of Prize Fighters, may have been mistreated, what lays in Qyntel's hightops is a gift that even an abused dog would forgive him for.

I return to my earlier reference of the Miami Hurricanes. If only Qyntel was more Hurricane he would still be dysfunctional but in a must more effective and vast way. Now he's just a mess.

With a nod to Pat Riley and the flock of Van Gundys, I see that the prescription has been written. If they only heed our recommendation, the investment would pay off in buckets of sardines. A ridiculously athletic compliment to D-Wade, Shaq and the rest of the cast. (This will be the first time I will mention the Van Gundys in the same breath as Riley when referencing greatness. I will be upset if it happens again, but still may.)

Dolphins are beloved for their crazy antics, shiny domes and ability to kick field goals. In spite of their weird sex habits. It is clearer to me now than ever before that Dolphins are the sea venturing mammal version of the Healers of Albatron, the prodigous Delphinidae whose keen powers of mind can mend even the strongest rift in any creature. Mana themselves.

Not yet whales, not exactly porpoises, but capable of delivering Qyntel Woods his soul.

You are completely misinformed about the Qyntel Woods case and the dog Hollywood. I'm Gabby Cholak with K-9 Rescue, the person that started this whole thing. I'm the one that picked the dog up late nnight from the people Qyntel and his buddies later harassed and assaulted, I'm the one that called the media, cops, and animal control. And I wish I could be the one to do to Qyntel what he did to Hollywood, Sugar, and the poor other pits(and cats burried in his yard used as bait, as well as little dogs). He is scum and the punishment he received didin't fit the crime, he should be rotting in jail.